Doctor Who: The Blue Angel

Eighth Doctor Adventures #27

by Paul Magrs, Jeremy Hoad

This is a story about Winter...

As the Doctor becomes involved in affairs aboard the Federation Starship Nepotist, his old friend Iris Wildthyme is rescuing old ladies who are being attacked by savage owls in a shopping mall.

And, in a cat's cradle of interdimensional corridors lies the Valcean City of Glass, whose King Dedalus awaits the return of his Angel son and broods over the oncoming war...

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Novels, Media Tie In, Science Fiction Fantasy

279 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published November 1, 1999

Reviews

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

After the two Interference novels this wacky and humorous entry feels like a season opener to the previous epic series finale from the previous year.

I really like the character of Iris Wildthyme, her return to the EDA’s added some much welcomed comic relief.

This is such a bizarre book with various stories all entwined and really reminds the reader that this is only part of a long continuation of novels.

My favourite sections were The Doctor’s involvement on a Federation starship Nepotist.
This Star Trek parody sums up everything about this book...

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not a book for newcomers...especially as it manages to be both integral to the on-going 8th Doctor Adventures at this point in the line AND manages to be a stand-alone commentary ABOUT that line, as well as the characteristics of the preceding 7th Doctor New Adventures novels. It's also a semi-sequel to Paul Magrs "The Scarlet Empress"...so there is a great deal of unpacking to be done for long term fans with this novel. But readers will be rewarded with all the magical realism one would expect from a Magrs novel, some satire that is all the more biting for its straightforward gentleness (Star Trek gets a hell of a shellacking here), and some surprisingly subtle in-jokes covering the length and breadth of the Whoniverse. This is an odd, hilarious, terrifying thing of beauty...but it threatens to do your head in on more than one occasion.

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

While certain aspects of this novel are confusing (and I believe they are meant to be) it is still more engaging and interesting than the last several installments of the EDAs. I haven't been this invested in a stories belonging to this series since Janus. It's also a bit heady and metaphorical, and I don't think we're really supposed to understand what's happening yet. Iris is back, but she and the Doctor don't actually meet up until the very end of the story- she reveals the existence of the Obverse, and some war that the Doctor has no current knowledge of.
Several different threads are at play here, and they come to a head in Valcea, the city of glass. I'm not thrilled with the ambiguous ending- it seems as though the authors wrote themselves into a corner and weren't sure how to finish it- either leaving it to their future selves or another author of the series to figure out. I did enjoy the very obvious Star Trek (original series) satire of the Nepotist and its crew; five year mission, mustard yellow shirts, tight red velvet mini-skirts for the women, the trans-mat pads, 'Forceps' the doctor, the engineer who's "giving it all he's got", the reference to the time they visited a mirror universe and their evil selves... I could honestly go on and on here. As a TOS fan, I was giggling over the references. Other parts of the story involved giant bats, men made of glass who traveled in wheelchairs, huge owls that steal people from shopping malls, an adopted boy that's really an angel, and an elephant tyrant ruler who can change matter at will. It's odd, but somehow, the story works.
The only sections I didn't understand was the Doctor living in house with his companions and Iris, tending a garden, visiting his mother who is really a mermaid? And Sally and her dog, who I think are supposed to be an iteration of Sarah Jane and K9?
Some of this was a little too wacky for me, but the fact that I kept turning pages and was invested says a lot. Plus, if Paul Magrs is involved, you know things are going to be crazy.

[Trin · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hated this! I was briefly almost internally persuaded to bump my rating to 2 stars, just for this scene:

Could he leave the Doctor's company for this woman?

What would the Doctor say?

He couldn't imagine never seeing the Doctor again. There was so much they hadn't said and done...

He felt a nasty pang, somewhere in his gut, and suddenly he could see the Doctor's face before him and he remembered how he had laughed when Sam told the story of her erstwhile infatuation with the Time Lord.

But Fitz could see how it might work. All that power and intelligence, that charming intensity... Even if he was raving mad.

Fitz swallowed hard. He was the one who was raving mad. He was in the midst of the most ridiculous danger, horse-riding down a mountainside, probably about to die and, in the final few minutes of his life, what was passing through his mind? Not the greatest, most fulfilling moments in this life -- but a consideration of his chances of getting laid by Iris... and even of getting laid by the Doctor.

But no! Fitz's fourteenth canonical gay freakout is not enough! This book sucks!

I was not a fan of Magrs' writing style in Doctor Who: The Scarlet Empress, and it is not improved here by the addition of a cowriter. Scattered, nonsensical, full of constant POV-hopping... The book is plotted in the same way, with a bunch of weird things happening one after another, just because. Magrs and Hoad even call themselves out, with the Doctor as the mouthpiece:

The Doctor nodded. "It's no illusion. Nothing in the Corridors is unreal. Everything has been brought here from somewhere, from some time. But it's all without rhyme or reason..."

YEAH. Annoying, that!

Worse, the authors squander some potentially interesting ideas: there's a whole domestic AU (in which Eight, once again, has amnesia, natch) that never feels fully integrated to me; there's CANON DOCTOR MPREG (of the leg??); there are owl and bat aliens. But we flit past all these things without giving any of them the respect of due time or attention.

There's also a fucking Star Trek parody shoved in here. This doesn't really make sense, as ST exists in the universe of these books -- it's referenced constantly -- but whatever. What really pisses me off is that it's not an accurate or funny or affectionate parody. It's kind of squalid and nasty. Why include this? Why include any of it when it all feels like scribbled napkin notes about which you, the authors, do not even care?

Let me save any other readers the bother of trying to care when the writers don't seem to: the best scene in the novel is now present in full right here.

[Evie · Rating 4 out of 5]

see rtd, *this* is how you do doctor who and fantasy

[Travis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another one of those eighth Doctor novels that tries so hard to be clever and innovative that it has almost no plot and you feel like you've started a trilogy by reading the second book.

Lots of interesting bits are thrown together, but never seem to work as a whole, the Doctor is treated like a guest star, as that Iris woman with the big hat and the bus takes over.
Yes, she's a fun character, but if she takes over every book she shows up in, is never really explained and only going to guest star in books that are this badly written, what's the point?

Give her a series of her own, and spare us this kind of mess in the future or stop trying to impress us with how clever you are and just write a decent, straight forward sci-fi adventure.

[Jon Arnold · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many and grievous were the sins in the 90s committed in the name of trying to make Doctor Who more ‘adult’. The TV movie is merely the most egregious effort, but most of the work was being done in the book ranges. The writers dragging Doctor Who toward supposed maturity were mainly young, inexperienced men and this was largely a dwarf star alloy anchor to their vaulting ambition. They mistook the paraphernalia of adulthood for actual maturity, tits, big guns and sadistic violence that the show could never have gotten away with on TV, not even under Eric Saward. It was there in the first of the New Adventures, Timewyrm: Genesys, which simply bolted sex and violence on to an otherwise fairly standard Doctor Who story. Those first three books in the range were weird, transitional hybrids where elements justifying the ‘too broad and deep for the small screen’ hype were simple surface details. Underneath the show lay unchanged, if anything retreating from the more modern direction the series had been taking in the final days of its original run. Fortunately the fourth book, Paul Cornell’s Timewyrm: Revelation, produced a paradigm shift which pointed out that there was far more potential in Doctor Who as a novel range than the first three books had demonstrated. It hasn’t aged particularly well, mainly as the then fresh tricks it used became so well-mined but reading it at the time it was almost revolutionary. Character was emphasised, a sort of SF version of magic realism conjured up and for the first time the Doctor was fleshed out as a character rather than simply being a lone ranger riding into town and catalysing change. Most significantly Cornell included contemporary references to the likes of My Bloody Valentine, The Stone Roses and Simon Groom, the shared pop culture of the day. As Russell T Davies aimed to include a huge dollop of 2005 in Rose, Cornell included a huge dollop of 1991 in Revelation. It’s the last stage of the Cartmel approach, anchoring the Doctor to our era. What’s noticeable is that, in line with our entertainment preferences of the time, most of these references were to film, TV and music rather than books. It’s often claimed the books are a significant influence on the reinvigorated Doctor Who of the 21st century, but aside from surface elements it’s the approach pioneered here which constitutes the major influence.
What most took from Revelation was the element of angst present, the Doctor’s guilt and the weight of his actions down the centuries. As a result the series often became morbid, a gloomy outlook punctuated mainly by black comedy and odd comic interludes from the likes of Gareth Roberts and Steve Lyons. Wit was often confined to Bernice Summerfield’s snarky asides, the brighter side of life largely abandoned. In short Doctor Who had ventured far from its original conceit as a centrepiece of Saturday night television designed for as wide an audience as possible. The audience now was pretty much self-selecting, fanboys of a completist stripe or those in thrall to the work of adventurous comic writers such as Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. You can see the two halves of the audience in the then infamous ‘rad v trad’ wars (often characterised as ‘frocks vs guns’. With Virgin expanding their range to include previous Doctors the books could seem like an ideological battle for the Doctor’s soul, designed more to prove a point than to provide a satisfying adventure. If you wade into the depths of the internet it’s captured in the RADW newsgroups of the time (although much of the debate can be deeply unedifying). It lent a buzz to picking up the books each month but often it came at the expense of joy – the run from St Anthony’s Fire through to Sanctuary may well be the most downbeat sequence of stories in Doctor Who’s history.

The books moved from Virgin to the BBC and the eighth Doctor became the centre of the ongoing adventures but, after a transition period which tried to reset the books to a default adventure structure, a semblance of normality was returned, with Alien Bodies giving the range a jolt by drawing inspiration from the Doctor’s future as much as his past. It retools an old enemy to great effect but it’s more interested in setting up mysteries, as much the touchstone for the BBC books as Revelation had been for the Virgin ones. The appeal is still obvious, even at the end the reader’s left wanting the mysteries raised here to be answered. Faction Paradox remains a striking enough concept to power a book range nearly two decades after their first appearance and the universe of potential Miles creates here would essentially shape the eighth Doctor range for eight years, with key books either building on it or being a reaction to it.

The trouble was, beneath the snazzy, sparkling concepts Alien Bodies was largely remixing the same influences that had driven the latter half of the range, old toys dressed up and made shiny and new (in retrospect the extent to which the ranges became a Grant Morrison tribute act to the detriment of everything else can be embarrassing at times). The radical tradition became defenders of what had become a status quo, like all revolutionaries once they become the establishment, fooled by shiny toys. Perhaps this is why Alien Bodies has maintained its reputation, because there was something for everyone in there. And like any limited ideal over time the Morrison fuel lost its potency, leaving the BBC range to woozily wobble through increasingly convoluted plots to a muddled and not overly satisfying conclusion; killed by the phoenix phenomenon of the revived show.

The trouble is it didn’t have to be this way. Alien Bodies was the clear standout of a directionless first year of the range (the books not having had a chance to assimilate Miles’ ideas yet). Only Jon Blum and Kate Orman’s two books offered any sort of forward vision for the show or coherent idea of what this Doctor should be and what the tone of the era might be. In theory this was a range with the perfect chance to do what Doctor Who did best – to juxtapose unlikely ideas and offer an infinite variety of stories. In practice it largely ambled through a holding pattern of amiable, generic stories. And then, in September 1998, Paul Magrs arrived to present an arresting, alternative vision.
Magrs had a small brush with the Who range before, his name appropriated by Paul Cornell for a minor character in Love and War but he’d spent the intervening years developing his own writing career, finding his voice with the northern English magic realism of the Phoenix Court books. Magrs at this point was perhaps too idiosyncratic to provide a specific template for the series but it wasn’t necessarily the story The Scarlet Empress told but what it did and what it stood for that actually mattered. The story of the Who range to this point is that it’s a range of books powered by people obsessed with a TV show and comics; therefore the sources they’re drawing from are largely and openly from different forms of entertainment that don’t have the strengths of the written word. Shadowmind, for instance, openly rips off Quatermass, a re-read of Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol run tells you precisely where all the ideas in Falls the Shadow come from and stories such as The Eight Doctors are openly Doctor Who eating itself. Magrs melded his love of Doctor Who in all its forms with the richness of ancient storytelling traditions of 1001 Nights, turning Doctor Who into a fairytale on a London bus. He even had the temerity to introduce his own creation, Iris Wildthyme, a female mirror of the Doctor (and who’s become something far more interesting and complicated since). It was beautiful, bright and challenging, a full banquet in the middle of a menu of junk food. Doctor Who hadn’t quite been like this before – perhaps the closest were the heyday of the 80s comic strips with The Tides of Time and Voyager. It certainly shares a meta fascination with stories with the latter.

Magrs returned a year later. Appropriately his next book, a co-write with his partner Jeremy Hoad, followed the egotistical mountain of Lawrence Miles’ Interference, Doctor Who’s literary equivalent of a concept album. It parlayed the fascinations of Alien Bodies into a sprawling tale of gun running, torture, paradox and the author’s ever growing fascination with ideas and media. It was inventive in precisely the approved manner, putting the Doctor and his companion Fitz through the emotional and physical wringer, playing games with Doctor Who’s history and, in places, being terrifically angry with the state of the world. In short it was a Big Statement, a State Of The World address. For all the fuss about the much misunderstood paradox Miles introduces the real significance of the books is to tell you that this approach to Doctor Who has lost a lot of the zip and sparkle it promised and that the joy was gone. It’s Doctor Who’s Be Here Now, ideas and promise buried under layers of noise. The signal vanishing in the interference if you will. It’s pushing it too far to say that Miles was burning out but it’s clear from how he chafes against the limitations of Doctor Who during the book that there are things he wants to do that are better done outside the format (and which he would do with This Town Will Never Let Us Go). For author and series this was a dead end, a definitive statement which prioritises ideas over characters or series. It’s a hazy, horrible and unclear introduction for Compassion and even by the standards of companions messes Fitz up to the point he’s barely a viable character any more and that’s even before the idiosyncratic idea of introducing a paradox into the Doctor’s past (whatever its reputation it’s *not* a retcon).

Follow that then.

From a scheduling point of view it might have made more sense to follow Interference with a relatively straightforward tale, one leaning towards a ‘trad’ version of Who. Instead piling The Blue Angel on straight after Interference is an act of glorious madness. Interference has the reputation as the more difficult book but it really isn’t. It’s a shout of anger at the state of the world and Western culture, an attempted definitive statement. It’s a teenage idea of maturity, that dark ‘realistic’ places demonstrate the writer’s adulthood and wisdom. Frivolity, mirth and joy are an equal part of life and often it’s far more adult and difficult to try to deal with them in story. By that measure The Blue Angel is infinitely stranger and more adult than Interference and far truer to the spirit of the series than its immediate predecessor. This is a novel which happily captures the camp ridiculousness of the original Star Trek and asks what might happen if it found itself in the Doctor Who universe. And it places it against the other worlds Magrs had created before, the worlds of Iris Wildthyme and Phoenix Court. Magrs brings his Northern version of magic realism to Doctor Who and lets it roam wild. It doesn’t only impact on the main story, which starts in a shopping centre but also on the parallel narrative which is interspersed throughout the story. It acts as a meta commentary on Doctor Who and the story, much as the backup pirate strip does in Watchmen. This is clearly an even richer brew than The Scarlet Empress, looking outward to other sources to move the series forward where Interference only looks inward. It remembers that smart tricks are acceptable as long as you remain entertaining. And if you can’t find entertainment in the Doctor essentially teaming up with Captain Kirk to fight a city of glass men ruled by a Ganesh like being from the Obverse… you’re clearly reading the wrong series.

The most controversial aspect of The Blue Angel remains its ending. As a series filled with books from inexperienced writers the Virgin ranges and their BBC successors were filled with books which rattled along for 250 or more pages and were having so much fun they were forced to stop rather than actually come up with an ending satisfying both plot and theme. The Blue Angel’s final chapter is a series of twenty questions which ask what happened next. You can read that ending as a clever literary conceit commenting on that. Or you can read it as a great cheat because the authors have hit their word count. Only, on the latter count, you’re wrong and not reading carefully enough. The main story ends with the Doctor being removed from the action, though much of the plot is unresolved. It’s an ending which seeks to engage the reader and ask them to work their imagination even harder and depends largely on how the reader perceives the characters and their motivations. It laughs hard at the idea of pretension and refuses to acknowledge that such a concept exists; this is simply another appropriate idea for the authors to play with. Where many books have simply drawn on Doctor Who itself or the cutting edge of comics Magrs and Hoad are happily plundering literature beyond the ken of the average fan to enrich their work (naming an alien race after Gertrude Stein? Now that’s style). I’d already thought that the chapters of the Doctor and his companions living an ordinary life might have been the finest to appear in a Who novel but the quirkiness and cheek meant that thought didn’t survive to the end of the book. There’s more ambition and playfulness here than almost any other book in the range.

Angels are beautiful you know. And an antidote to sin. Let yourself be seduced and you might find out what one face of mature Doctor Who really looks like.

[Hidekisohma · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is one of the frustrating ones. Why? Because it was ALMOST a great story. I normally like Paul Magrs. His last doctor who book, Scarlet Empress, was actually one of, if not my favorite in the whole series this far, but this one, man...was it disjointed. considering this was a co-write with a guy named "Jeremy Hoad". so, i'm going to partially blame it on the fact that it was co-written by a guy who has never done a doctor who thing before or since for its disjointedness.

This is one of those broken into 3-4 stories going on at the same time doctor who books

Doctor is with people on a ship who beam down to a glass city
Fitz and Compassion are stuck in the tardis until they meet Iris
Iris is with a bunch of old ladies and a creepy boy one of the ladies found in a cave a few years earlier and they're running away from giant owls.

Then it just breaks off into smaller stories once they separate, like a girl named belinda wanders off with a glass guy, and the captain does his own thing and honestly it's just a mess. There are weird scenes where we'll cut from the doctor doing actual plot stuff, to a flashback or something of him tending to a garden or hanging out in a cafe, or in a spiritualist church and you swear that they just grabbed random nonsense scenes and stapled them together and pretended it was a coherent plot.

Without too many spoilers i'll just say the story just kind of...ends. there's no real resolution. so if you're hoping for one too bad. they just hit their page number and the story ended.

The issue with this book was that there was a good story buried somewhere deep in here. The concept of the glass city was cool, and even the elephant head villain was neat too. I really liked Compassion in this book (seeing as this was her first REAL companion book as she wasn't a companion in Interference) and her complete reverse personality to Sam. it's nice to see a character who doesn't take crap from the doctor and tells him when he's being stupid rather than having a doting fangirl. So at the very least, as of now, i can say that Compassion is a good addition to the team, which is nice.

Fitz does SOME in this book (more in interference, but you know...the bar for that one was so low it's almost not worth mentioning) but most of it is drooling over Iris (she regenerated in the last book so now she's hot again).

You can tell that Paul REALLY likes Iris. With the exception of "Sick Building" it seems like every time Paul writes a book, he likes including her and kind of... inserting her into the doctor's backstory. like a "oh hey doc, remember when we did this together?" like, a retroactive character insert. It's fine at times, but feels a little too.... fanficy at times with this character. Most of Iris' previous interactions with the doctor have been "tell don't show" and references to events that MAYBE happened in her own spinoff book series, but i can't tell you a single soul who has read those.

The doc himself is..fine? like he seems to have some of usual quirkiness which i'm glad for and he doesn't seem like a sad husk now that sam's gone, but you can definitely feel it a few times especially in his interactions with compassion when she isn't immediately agreeable to him like Sam was. Like i said, the doc/compassion talks are definitely the highlight of the book.

Overall, this book needed WAY more editing and it needed some direction. with 2 different writers it felt like it. it was all over the place and really needed a focus. i like how most of the parts came together at the end, but it was too little too late, and in the end, they didn't even really DO anything to wrap up the story.

I WISH i could give this story higher because i really DO like Paul, but this was just a weird unedited mess. Still though, for the parts that made sense, it was enjoyable enough and i didn't DISLIKE it. like the old saying goes, i'm not mad, i'm just disappointed.

3 out of 5.

[Danny Welch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paul Magrs for his second EDA co-wrote with his partner Jeremy Hoad 'The Blue Angel', a novel that is unlike any other Doctor Who story he has written and arguably his most insane.

It's a story about winter. The Doctor and his companions find themselves aboard a federation starship that's being run by a curious cast of characters. The captain can't stand him, but when they come across a city with glass people inside in the middle of space, it seems the captain might need The Doctor's help after all. On Earth, a group of elderly women and Maddy's adopted son find themselves in a besieged shopping mall, but thankfully Iris Wildthyme has arrived to save the day. Meanwhile, in a strange reality, The Doctor lives a domesticated life where he has dreams of terrifying monsters and bizarre adventures. Just what is going on and how does it all connect to a tyrant's plan for creating a war unlike anything else the universe has ever seen before?

Paul Magrs and Jeremy Hoad have written a really bizarre but imaginative 8th Doctor novel that is absolutely insane but a lot of fun. While probably the weakest of Paul's three EDA's, it's certainly his strangest. It's a story filled with fan wank, imagination and plenty of comedy. The story's a weird blend between a star trek parody and a fantasy epic. It's a spiritual sequel of sorts to The Scarlett Empress, with plenty of references to the VNAs of all things.

This story is hard to describe; even as I write, I'm still trying to figure out what I read. It's a very surreal and experimental read that tests the reader in a way that might not work for some people. It's a story that refuses to give explanations and instead leaves it up to the reader with a few hints to figure out for themselves what happened. The ending is a weird anti-climax, but it's deliberately designed in that way, for once The Doctor's just as disappointed as the reader with how everything wraps up.

Overall: Depending on who you are, you're either going to think this novel's a creative masterpiece, or a bizarre experiment gone wrong. I really liked it, but I definitely prefer Magrs other two EDA'S over this one. 8/10

[Michel Siskoid Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm normally a fan of Paul Magrs, but The Blue Angel (written with his partner Jeremy Hoad) is extremely clunky and is therefore a disappointment. On the whole, no matter how much I like that mode, it's TOO postmodern. It has the cheeky business we expect from Magrs - Iris Wildthyme (here played by Jane Fonda's Barbarella), a vicious Star Trek parody, weird aliens with impossible cultures, humor - and that's all for the good. But the shifting points of view are confusing, especially considering there's an entire strand featuring the Doctor as a normal person, interacting with veiled versions of past companions, which is never explained. It takes a while before you even know what's going on, and the ending refuses to give you proper explanations, or even a proper ending. We're literally left with questions which we are expected to answer for ourselves (and perhaps these are obvious from the framing). Very postmodern, and I wouldn't have minded it if it were the only trick being used. But we also have everything else, almost in a random arrangement, as well as a deconstructionist approach where, once again, the Doctor isn't really allowed to save the day. The Blue Angel itself is the weakest part of a book that sparkles here and there, but leaves you frustrated overall.

[said · Rating 2 out of 5]

Coming off the two best Doctor Who stories in 'Times Champion' and 'Interference,' to end up reading this was very disappointing, to say the least. The concept was the only reedeaming quality of the book, yet sadly that werent enough to carry the story through the usage of an insane amount of POVs, unneccasrary characters and subplots. Compassion being the new heir to the seat of companionship alongside Fitz, is defintely something im trying to get used to, there really hasnt been alot of companions in the series of her archetype so to say, and coming off a huge favorite of mine with Sam, its going to be a major learning curve and something I got to get used to sooner or later. Doctor wasn't that much of a focal point in this book sadly, although seeing Iris again is always fun, but the cluttery mess throughout the book made it hard to look past that and appreciate rare moments of brilliance. Had hoped to get more out of this book, especially since it was one right after 'Interference,' but regardless, I'm happy that I'm done and can move on to a major story arc in the next entry.


𝐑𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: 𝟑/𝟏𝟎

[K · Rating 2 out of 5]

Iris Wildthymというtimeladyにドクターがあらゆるゴタゴタから守られる話。

短い章立てで、様々な世界でいろいろなことが起こる。その様々な世界のキャラクターが別の世界の進行ストーリーの中で言述されてみたり、クロスしてみたり。
その中で冬のロンドンにドクターが左足の痛みに悩まされながら普通に生活している世界がある。他の世界の話は、その世界によるとそのドクターが友人のサリーの書いた本の中に出てくるお話ということになっている。ただ自分の世界が唯一の本物だと思わないほうがいいというながれもあり、結局どのラインが物語として本筋で起こっていることなのか見極めることが難しい。もしくは見極めること自体無意味なつくりになっている。もし後者であれば、だったら読むこと自体無駄ではないかと腹が立たないでもない。
しかし、左足の痛みから察すると、ファクションパラドックスの影響下にとりこまれたドクターの姿であると受け取れないこともない。これから長い長い年月をかけて、このドクターはギャリフレイをのみこむファクションパラドックスのグランドダッドになっていくのかもしれない。しかし、確信すするにはほのめかしがたりない。

いずれにせよどの物語もラストがおそろしくおざなりだ。一番リアィティに近いと思われていた冬に覆われた街に住むドクターの物語ですら、最後にドクターの足の痛みの現認となった腫れから青色の子供が生まれるという劇中劇にでてきたあの子がこの子なのかとおもわせる描写がある。

作者の試みとしてはおもしろいような気もするが、だとしてもそれぞれの物語にもうすこしカタルシスのきいたオチなり余韻ない用意していてくれていてもバチはあたらないでないのかと。

苦労して読んだのだから何か建設的な意味を持った作品であってくれと思いたい自分がいるが、どんだゴミを読まされたような心地も否めない。それとも人助けや戦争などの悲劇を回避しようとするドクターからドクターを救出するとどうなるかという試みだったのだろうか。
うーん。

[Gareth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Paul Magrs returns, with partner Jeremy Hoad, to deliver another whimsical adventure in the vein of The Scarlet Empress. Well, sort of. This has the same overflow of ideas at all times but it’s more grandiose in scope and consequently a lot harder to follow; worryingly this seems to be the point. For a number of reasons I struggled to buy into the character journeys and I just plain don’t enjoy having no idea what a book is about. The generally frivolous humour, a hallmark of Magrs and in itself a nice thing to have, here throws a complex and hard-work story into irritatingly flippant relief. It well and truly was not for me.

1.5

[Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I strangely enjoyed this book, I'm not saying I was bound to not like it as I know this book does have mixed opinions, I enjoyed this book way more than I expected too. It's weird, Light-hearted and a bit confusing at times, I also really don't like Compassion in this one, I find her irritating.

[Macey · Rating 3 out of 5]

comprehension of this probably massively impeded by the fact that i read it in like ten page sections between like 11.30 pm & midnight but made no sense lowkey

[Basicallyrun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rereading this because if there's a book you *don't* want to be reading in fits and starts on the subway, it's this. Confusing as anything, even when sitting down reading for hours at a time, though I can blame at least part of that on the dodgy formatting of my ebook copy, which cuts out the scene breaks.

Being a Trekkie, I was highly entertained by the Nepotist and that line of plot, although having the Doctor so far out of his depth felt kind of... off to me, especially when Iris seemed to have all the answers. I think I'm too used to NuWho's Last of the Time Lords thing, where the Doctor pretty much always knows the most about what's going on. I love alternative universes, so Obverse!Doctor's life was very interesting, even if parts of his narration sounded far more like Fitz's voice than the Doctor's. But as an AU Doctor, I can sort of understand that. And the Obverse is *fun* to play about in.

Love the weird meta bits with Canine in the Obverse (and playing Spot the Characters is always fun), and the surreal feel of that 'verse, but I felt like the ideas were more exciting than their execution.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 1 out of 5]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1883649.html

I didn't really get much out of this Eighth Doctor novel, set immediately after the two-volume Interference, with the Doctor, Fitz and new companion Compassion getting involved with various aliens and Iris Wildthyme. I did like the fact that we encounter a young svelte Iris as well as the standard more elderly version - indeed this is one of the better stories about Iris out there. But I was hoping to get a better handle on what Compassion is all about, and didn't; and the various alien plot threads were all entangled without being terribly interesting. One of those books that I recommend only for completists (and fans of Iris).

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The few 8th Doctor books I've read have been very surreal and this one was no exception. I bought it cause I love Iris Wildthyme and here she was in early book form, interacting with the 8th Doctor! Though Iris didn't actually have many scenes with the Doctor and was mostly on her own. It was funny to hear her bus actually referred to as a TARDIS. Interesting to hear about her different regenerations. It was all quite surreal. There were many different stories going on and interacting, or not quite interacting. Of all of them I found the fake Star Trek a bit annoying but enjoyed the others. With all the references to snow and winter this is definitely the right time of year to read this book.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Doctor is leading 2 lives, one his normal adventurous self who has got involved in a star trek style adventure, the other a normal mundane life with no knowledge of time travel. In both universes he meets Iris. This is the introduction of the obverse in the books. Yes, it is very confusing at first and I suspect this is a love it or hate it book. I enjoyed the new incarnation of Iris and her interactions with Fitz. A good read.

[Nenya · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was happy to see the return of Iris Wildthyme, but the plot of this book was just awful--it seemed like as soon as they had introduced one set of characters or one side-universe, instead of developing it at all they got bored with it and grabbed another one to fling at us. Very slapdash, throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. Parts of the Obverse intrigued me, but I've seen fanfiction treatments of the concept that are far better.

[Rob Melvin · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the worst eighth Doctor books I've read. It doesn't feel even a little bit like a Doctor Who story. They tried really hard to write a Doctor Who book that was also a Star Trek satire and failed miserably at both. Rambling with virtually no plot to speak of this would have been better of as a comic parody short story.

[Vass · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW.

[Leela42 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eighth Doctor Adventure (EDA) with Fitz and Compassion. Interesting at first, but by about page 130 you're suspecting (rightly) that none of this is going to BECOME anything.

[Simon Curtis · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's Paul Magrs. It has a blue elephant and crystal beings. Say no more.

[Janelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

A truly odd book. I enjoyed it but my reasons for doing so are about as confusing as the story's plot line.

[Numa Parrott · Rating 1 out of 5]

DO NOT READ

[Melenia · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF -- made it to chapter 19 and gave up. The story is so all over the place I'm not enjoying it at all :(